


Zhuangzi's Butterfly

by juuchan



Category: Gundam 00
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 21:46:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juuchan/pseuds/juuchan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is death?</p>
<p>Death is to be forgotten. The first death is one that cannot be remembered, and so too will be the last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zhuangzi's Butterfly

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2008 for holiday contest. Tense is very important; set at the end of Season 1. Read thoroughly for best comprehension.
> 
> * * *

This is how he remembers it:  
  
The textured smell of soil and foliage, carrying an undercurrent of freshwater and metal as the GN particles circled about, and the absence of conventional communications systems to give him a headache. An atmosphere-filtered sun overhead, and his teammates in comfortable silence. It gave him the same sense of ease as he had in open space, despite being cluttered with so many extraneous details.  
  
It is a memory that Veda has no access to, one that he did not have the chance to upload, and it is the first of a sequence that unsettled-- no, frightened him. Is this how everyone else remembers the past, hazy with only moments of clarity, buffered with the chemical-induced sensation of nostalgia instead of the static of Veda's subroutines?  
  
This is how he remembers it:  
  
The true taste of despair, stronger than any gravity well, coursing through his veins and dragging him down with the pull of a neutron star as he was stripped of all guidance and knowledge, structure and form, purpose and reason, a flesh-made being devoid of its extracellular matrix: Veda had rejected him, abandoned him, and in place of it lay the absence of existence.  
  
And yet, in the draining haze of it all, being forced to realize that he was still alive, still conscious, that he still kept living. It was not in the form of the absent Veda, of Sumeragi and the other females with their voices crackling over the intercom, nor of the awareness of his own failure to perform, but of Lockon --  _the deafening scream of strained e-carbon buckling under stress and heat, indistinguishably intertwined with Lockon's voice and Lockon's actions, Lockon Lockon Lockon--_  
  
Why is a futile question without Veda's analysis engine for support, but it doesn't stop him from wondering. Why Lockon did it, why the action disturbs him so, why he can't filter out the emotions that come with reliving every recent memory. Is this how others make their every decision, why Setsuna so brazenly stepped outside of his cockpit mid-combat, why Allelujah violated directives by choosing to save the civilians, why Lockon flared up in rage over civilian terrorism despite his own hypocrisy?  
  
His memories no longer correlate with what Veda-filtered data he retains; is it Veda whose data has been tampered with, or is the veracity of his own memories, contaminated by his human fallacies without Veda to guide him? To question either, to question both still spelled the same consequences-- what part of his knowledge is true, and what part of it otherwise?   
  
The only truth he knows is that it hurts to bring up the thought of Lockon, and he desperately wants to know why.  
  
*  
  
"If you want to talk, I can listen," Allelujah offers as Tieria observes Lockon sleeping via the biometric data, unable to bring himself to use the video feeds.  
  
"It was my fault," he states flatly. "There is nothing more to talk about."   
  
Silence interspersed with steady blips on the heart-rate monitor punctuates the finality of his statement, but Allelujah makes no motion of leaving. Finally, Allelujah says, "We're not all given maps and a compass to navigate our way through." His tone is unoffensive, but his words steadily obtrusive. "It's frightening, and that fear was overpowering, but it's part of the experience. At least, I have to think so." _Otherwise, I would not have made it,_  goes unspoken, but Tieria remembers his data file-- if such were the truth.  
  
It is not uncertainty, it is not improbability, it is not the prospect of death nor doom; it is to not know, the absence of knowledge of that terrifies him, if this emotion could be called that. He must not be overcome by this, looking down the twin barrels of shame and inadequacy.  
  
"In space," Tieria responds, "there is no compass. Our relative position is determined by the stars, and they too move."  
  
"Maa, so that is. But I think, at least in Celestial Being, as a Gundam meister, we...I look towards the world to find our bearing."  
  
The world is not something he cares for, and it gives him no direction. But he needs something, because he's still alive-- no, he's forced to be alive, because Lockon held more value to him living than dying, when Veda did not.  
  
What gives Lockon direction? His hatred for Ali Al Sarchez? His desire for revenge? Or does he, too, look for the response of the world? Tieria wants to understand.  
  
Behind them, the doors slide open. Moreno and Sumeragi have come to check up on Lockon, and that would mean waking him, having to face Lockon and his remaining eye.  
  
"You're leaving?" Allelujah asks as he sidesteps Moreno, ignoring Sumeragi's greeting. "He will be--"  
  
"That is why."  
  
Allelujah falters, and once again mechanical silence becomes the dominant element as he leaves the room, a now unpleasant presence still more preferable than if he had stayed.  
  
*  
  
"I apologize," he tells Setsuna, even though he knows everything he accused of him is true. As he hands Haro over to him, he finally grasps the weight of irony. "I acted out of turn." It is poor form to abuse the consent Setsuna has given him, when so few others are permitted to touch the boy.  
  
Setsuna grunts in assent. "This?"  
  
"There is relevant data on it." Setsuna nods.  
  
"What now, then?" Allelujah asks. "We can defend against those false GN drives, but at this point, it's clear what the world's response is. To retreat weakens our position, but to fight...could do the same."  
  
"To fight is to live." Setsuna cradles Haro in one arm, his small frame disproportionate compared to Haro's usual carrier. "They're rejecting Gundam. We must make them understand."  
  
"There is reason for us to fight," Tieria tells them. This is the truth as he knows it; Lockon would want them to keep on fighting, as he had done himself. It is no longer about being rational nor reasonable, he understands, it's about holding firm to the driving conviction, being ruled by these human emotions just as Lockon had been, and perhaps find his answer there in place of Lockon. Lockon,  _Lockon._  
  
He continues, ignoring the tightness in his chest and the thickness in his throat. "We knew there are consequences to our actions. So now we must face them, and show them our strength instead of our backs. Then, we can listen once more to their response. If they still do not understand, we will continue." He meets their eyes, and they both match his intensity. "This is Celestial Being."  
  
*  
  
This is how he remembers it:  
  
A part of him was still conscious, but no longer identifiable. His brain was unable to differentiate between the physical body that hosted it and the mechanical shell within which the body nested, every sensory nerve screaming bright-hot in pain, convinced all vital organs were in cascade failure. Outside, the remaining sensors picked up only broken refuse and cast-off wrecks, dotting the spacescape of hard vacuum and unyielding solar rays.  
  
It was over, he was at his limit. He had done his part, failure or not, and he could only ask the remaining others to carry on the task. Without Veda, he had no chance of survival; without Lockon...  
  
Is this what Lockon had thought, is this what Lockon had felt? What would Lockon say to this, and say to the strange, intangible hurt that existed in neither body nor mind? Maybe he had found it, perched precariously at the edge of the abyss, the mutable quality that made him human. Would Lockon smile, and reach out with an open hand?   
  
(Why does he remember this?)  
  
In the promise of mortality, would it be to clasp firmly and help him up, or to pull him tumbling down together?  
  
(How can he remember this?)  
  
They both gave the same sense of relief and peace, finally able to escape the corporeal drag of pain and the mechanical burden of procedure.  
  
(This is not the end.)  
  
The act of remembering denies mortality. The same question persists: is this the truth because he remembers it, or because he remembers it, the truth has already been altered?  
  
  
*  
  
  
From the surface, the stars have been reduced to pinpricks dotting a murky canvas, the ocean's rippling reflection an illusionary reality that, for once, seemed no less beautiful than the real thing. A lean profile cut knife-sharp through the indistinct boundary between water and sky: Lockon had abandoned his vest and shirt, standing shin-deep in the lapping waves with his pants rolled up and shoes hooked on two fingers, the pale curve of his neck exposed as he looked skyward into the moonless night.  
  
Tieria advanced, step by step, the cooled sand filtering between his toes. The trade winds began to pick up, weaving through the tropic's turgid humidity and salt-tinged vapors, tossing his hair and obscuring his vision. "Lockon," he said; it felt like a shout, and sounded like a whisper.  
  
"Do you think we look like that?" It was a question, and yet inflected as a statement. "A speck in the not so distant space, so far away that it registers only as a dream? Or when we enter the atmosphere, as a fast-burning meteor, or an angel no longer able to resist the pull of the earth?"  
  
These were not questions he could answer. He could no longer answer--  
  
"Our existence carries meaning, so long as we are remembered."  
  
To exist, the meaning of his existence--the absence of knowledge is to forget.  
  
"Humans are not that simple, are they? To keep living inside dreams and delusions, oblivious to their reality?"  
  
He stepped into the ocean, ignoring the sharp bite of its frigid waters. He pinned back his hair with one hand, but all that faced him was Lockon's back, broad and undecipherable.  
  
"Or is it because they simply accept this reality with no desire to change it?" Another few steps and closer still, but Lockon's face was a shadow carved out among highlights of a jaw and nose.  
  
"With me," Tieria started hesitantly, the heady mixture of uncertainty and confidence pulsing to his escalating heartbeat, "will you find that out, with me?"  
  
He extended a hand outward, and Lockon turned to him, pulling him in an embrace; his own body reacted before his mind, his hands moving of their own accord to settle over the smooth-skinned rise of his shoulder-blades. It was human to touch, an instinct as natural as breathing, and with it carried a myriad of emotions and meaning.  
  
It overwhelmed him.   
  
"I want to," Lockon whispered against his ear; his ungloved hands, more finger than palm, charted paths of no return, and down, down they burned. "I really do."  
  
The ocean's fish-scale reflection caught Lockon's good blue eye, the other sealed by analgesics and hastily patched over. Fear, guilt, sorrow-- they made a dangerous concoction of emotions Tieria couldn't rein in; he jerked his head away, cast down in shame.  
  
"Remember to look at me, Tieria." Lockon's voice rumbled with the undertones of assertion, those long-fingered hands braced on his shoulders. He wanted this grip, this touch, but not like this.  
  
"I-- I'm..."  
  
"Tieria, look at me."  
  
The commands rings in his ears.  
  
 _"Look at me."_  
  
Powder-green hair and vivid purple eyes, and the ever permanent child-like innocence; this is no alien face.  
  
"It's interesting, isn't it, the ability of the human mind to generate such vivid simulacra, the sublimation of physical and mental desires. Fantasies and false memories alike, indistinguishable and constructible with only the slightest basis of reality. It is far superior to any simulation engine that Veda can yet create, this human trait. I think we've already made significant progress, don't you think? It was good data." A smile, and lingering fingers over the jut of his cheekbone, tracing the curve of his jawline; he jerks his head away. "I would ask you to teach me, but I do not care. We are still not of their kind, no matter how you 'dream.'"  
  
Fingertips ghost over his collarbone, and a hand settles at the curve of his hip, a pale mimicry of the simulacrum, except--  
  
"Perhaps I can teach you things." Those eyes do not lose their kindness, because there was never any to begin with. "In the interest of building further data, and incorporating into future simulacra. Don't worry, I've only disabled your motor controls from the neck down; your sensory perception will still be intact."  
  
*  
  
Death is to be forgotten. The first death is one that cannot be remembered, and so too will be the last.

**Author's Note:**

> “Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awoke, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”  
> ― Zhuangzi, Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang-Tzu


End file.
